View full sizeBenjamin Brink/The OregonianLast month, Rodney Muirhead moved his restaurant, his recipes and, he hopes, his customer base from a vibrant corner in Northeast Portland to another, about a half-dozen blocks north, with a reputation for drug sales, prostitution and violence. Although the move was made for practical reasons, the restaurant has the potential to transform the neighborhood -- and it wouldn't be the first time.

Rodney Muirhead is cold.

It's 9 a.m. on a crisp February morning, he's been at work for four
hours, and right now, he's regretting not buying a different set of
ventilation hoods.

The hoods he bought do their job, whisking away the sweet smell of oak
burning in his new steel smoker. But, unlike other models, they don't
return any heat. And it's been cold.

Muirhead recently moved his restaurant, Podnah's Pit BBQ, from one of
Portland's most buzzed-about business corners to one of its most
notorious -- a commercial strip on Northeast Killingsworth Street
between 14th and 17th avenues described in an Oregonian article four
years ago as a "ghost town."

To some, Podnah's presence is a welcome sign that new capital is flowing
to a corner once hamstrung by misguided zoning regulations -- and by
its reputation for crime. To others, the restaurant represents the
gentrification of one of Portland's few remaining neighborhoods with
businesses largely owned and run by African Americans.

But these concerns weren't on Muirhead's mind when he began pondering a
move. He was sick of renting and he needed more room -- if he complains
about the cold now, perhaps he's forgetting that his old location was so
small, he had to keep his smoker on the back patio.

"I always wanted a full bar, and we were pretty crowded over there," he
says. "All of our cooking inside, like when we did breakfast, it was all
on countertop equipment."

Muirhead bought the building, a former church, in 2010 and set to work
on an extensive remodel. He transformed the streetside wall into a long
line of picture windows. He also brought in Justin Rideout -- the
woodworker behind the gorgeous buildout at Lovely's Fifty-Fifty pizzeria -- to
find reclaimed wood and fashion the floors, tables and bar. Muirhead
plans to give the same treatment to a smaller storefront in the
building, then rent it out. Curious neighbors began walking their dogs
past the space -- an area they previously might have avoided -- long
before Muirhead opened last month.

James Berry, who owns the building next door to Muirhead's, wonders why
it took so long for people to come to the neighborhood, when businesses
like his have always been around.

View full sizeBenjamin Brink/The OregonianFor years, businesses along Northeast Killingsworth Avenue near Podnah's new location faced a tough choice: If they wanted to redesign or expand, they were only allowed to construct condos or apartments. Rodney Muirhead acknowledges he benefited from the area being rezoned for commercial use in 2008. "We just completely lucked out," he says.

Berry opened One Stop Records in his building in 1983. He's pragmatic
about reports of drug sales outside -- "everybody's got to eat" -- and
points to quirks in the zoning code as the reason his corner stagnated
for so long while other areas in Northeast Portland, including stretches
of Northeast Alberta Street and even Northeast Killingsworth farther to
the east at 30th Avenue, have blossomed.

Muirhead is concerned by reports of drug use, prostitution and shootings
on his block, but he says he saw some of the same things at his old
location, at Northeast Prescott Street and 14th Avenue.

"It concerns me a little, but what can I do about it?" he says. "When we
moved in over on Prescott, it was pretty rough over there, too. I guess
this makes this an affordable building."

Muirhead would not divulge how much money he and his business partner,
Kirk Kelley, a creative director at Laika, have spent -- "we're still
adding that up." City records show the building was sold last April for
$350,000.

Despite his frustrations, Berry says he's proud of the recent growth in
the neighborhood, pointing not just to Podnah's but to a small produce
stand across the road and to another barbecue shop two blocks east,
U-Licious Smokehouse and Grill. When a man pops his head into the store
and asks where to eat, Berry recommends Podnah's.

"The meat is tender, unlike a lot of the barbecue in this town," says
Berry, who claims to be an expert on the subject of good barbecue.

Muirhead, a Dallas native, credits his barbecuing skill partly to his
grandfather, a butcher and the restaurant's namesake, and partly to his
upbringing -- "everybody in Texas cooks a brisket." He built his
reputation for making some of the best barbecue in Portland by starting
his days at 5 a.m. and ending them when he sold out.

These days, Muirhead usually shows up to work sporting a T-shirt and a
stubbly beard, but he originally came to Oregon to work in the high-tech
industry. He was here less than two years before his company laid him
off. Characteristically, Muirhead turned a bad situation into a good
one, starting a roving barbecue business that dished up meat at the
area's farmers markets. The stand, L.O.W. BBQ -- standing for Laid Off
Workers Barbecue -- eventually found a home on Monday nights at Apizza
Scholls, where Muirhead worked at the time. In 2006, he opened Podnah's
on Prescott.

View full sizeBenjamin Brink/The OregonianAlthough Rodney Muirhead credits his barbecuing skills to his Dallas upbringing -- "everybody in Texas cooks a brisket," he says -- his favorite barbecue comes from a relative newcomer to the Lone Star State -- Franklin Barbecue in Austin. Here, Muirhead's oak-smoked brisket is stacked in a sandwich and picked up by server Lauren Schatz.

By the time Muirhead left that location, the corner had become a
successful experiment in the ways a restaurant can combine with other
businesses -- a barbershop, a coffee shop, a bar -- to transform a
forgotten city corner into a hot spot drawing some of the city's
best-known chefs.

When Ben Meyer, the former chef at Ned Ludd, began looking for a space
to open his beer-centric Grain & Gristle with partners Alex Ganum
and Marcus Hoover, he originally was searching along Northeast 42nd
Avenue between Fremont and Killingsworth streets. But when the space
next door to Muirhead's opened, Meyer thought it was a better fit.

"In three different directions, we have really distinct demographics,"
Meyer says. "If you go 15 blocks to the west, it's working class, five
to 10 blocks south you have the highest income in the city and anywhere
northeast it's young urban professionals, single families with a half to
one kid who love to spend money, love to eat, love good booze."

Meyer says he liked the space but was taking his time until Muirhead
called him and told him that he was moving north and that Andy Ricker,
the restaurateur behind Pok Pok, the Whiskey Soda Lounge and Ping,
planned to take over his space.

"The minute people find out that Pok Pok is going in, interest in the
space is going to quadruple," Meyer recalls telling his partners in
urging them to sign a letter of intent that week. The line at Grain
& Gristle is already out the door; when Pok Pok Noi opens its doors
(expected later this month), that should only grow.

Meyer is convinced Muirhead will do fine in his new space: "He's doing
the same thing he did on 15th and Prescott. He might have people saying,
'Where is that?' at first. But once they go in, they're going to love
it."

But the change comes too late for Berry, who says he's ready to move on:
"I've been in here for 27 years. And that's enough. I fought the whole
time I've been here to hold onto this place. And it's time for change."